Influence of substrate temperature parameter on electrospinning process: example of application to the formation of gelatin fibers

Abstract

The substrate temperature was investigated to broaden the applicability of controlling the morphology of polymeric fibers produced during the electrospinning process. A laboratory electrospinning setup was designed using a substrate heated in a temperature range of 25 °C to 100 °C. A gelatin polymer was used as an example to obtain beads-free gelatin fibers by fixing the main electrospinning parameters. Based on XRD, FTIR, and DSC techniques, the electrospun gelatin fibers did not show any change in their chemical composition up to 100 °C. Heating the substrate at 50 °C may be the best selection factor to obtain gelatin fibers; the fiber diameters experienced a significant decrease from 680 ± 140 nm to 420 ± 120 nm with increasing substrate temperature from 25 to 50 °C, respectively. They showed stability of the diameter at 380 ± 130 nm and 390 ± 130 nm when increasing substrate temperatures from 75 to 100 °C, respectively, with a significant variation in their diameter distribution. Therefore, this ability to control the electrospinning process using a heated substrate makes it promising for fabricating electrospun beads-free fibers of biopolymers such as gelatin for tissue engineering and drug delivery carriers.